The Paths We Tread
by One Wish Magic
Summary: Any life can be measured in milestones, even that of a hunter, though they ring true of the unconventional. One-shot


_I became hooked on Supernatural a few months back, and this was the result of trial and error. It was originally intended to form part of something else, but it seemed to work as a stand-alone peice aswell so I gave it a shot. No spoilers I don't think._

_I own nothing but the pleasure of writing it. _

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><p><em><strong>The Paths We Tread<strong>_

Many things in life are strange, and they undoubtedly dealt with the strangest.

The occupation and life of a hunter was not one voluntarily elected, but one necessitated through unfortunate circumstance and diminished alternative. It's very inception was marked by a bloody and brutal course of careless death which claimed mothers, daughters, sons and fathers with inconsequential regard. It was a life of fading faces and ghosts of remembrance, full of anguish, resentment, obsession; and every hunter had his sorrow.

They were primal instincts; to hunt and to protect, but in this era, which looked upon them with such complacency, they were not the conventional and they marked their practiser's out as renegades of society. Hunters moved in convenient factions; indifferently amiable and eternally guarded, while all that was unearthly and ungodly in craft orchestrated habitual intermissions into their lives, periodically unlooked for, but for the greater part sought out. The life of a hunter was a permanent derailment.

But every life can be measured in milestones, not even that of a hunter is exempt.

In the preluding years of adulthood, Sam and Dean Winchester bore witness to, by experience or recount, some of the most fear inducing, horrifying, noisome, distressing and on occasion, amusing and endearing phenomenon of the past half century and beyond. And they had been raised readily equipped to face it head on.

By 3 years of age, Sam was well acquainted with the practice and rudiment of laying and maintaining salt lines, though he had no comprehension of their significance in repelling the supernatural. It had once been his habit to pace their length repetitively as a sentry, until his attention was called away either by Dean or his father. That had been the only time in Sam's life when John's vague impress; "_they'll help to keep you safe_" had sufficed as an apt explanation. Not long succeeding that, the questions started, and nine years later had still not let up.

By 5, Dean upon his own appointment, had taken the ensuring of Sammy's safety as a personal responsibility. In that turbulent year he cast the cloth of childhood and became a big brother. The one whose comfort Sam appealed for in brooding hours of the night when the world seemed to close in about him, the one whose arms he fled to when fear besieged him, the one with whom he sought proximity to in ailment or injury and the one who was a constant companion to share in every triumph, every memory and every milestone.  
>In the course of that year, John witnessed the foundation of their bond, a bond not just in brotherhood but also in friendship. Each would be the others most valued accomplice, and most persistent enemy dependant on circumstantial persuasion. Sammy hero-worshipped his brother, imitating his moods and mannerisms with unnerving accuracy, and Dean was mesmerized by him, he was helpless to those doleful eyes and familiarity granted no resistance.<p>

By 7, Sam had been introduced to the art of combat; free hand and implemented, in which he lost at every possible opportunity to an 11 year old Dean who was taller, stronger, heavier and in possession of four years worth more knowledge and practice than he. Sam had once read that there was an aspect of glory in knowing the battle was lost before it began but fighting the war anyway, in his experience it was folly, and hurt like hell.

Dean, for all his power and prowess was never overly rough, or rather, never intentionally. However, there were infrequent occasions when one or both of them became too impassioned and spent the remainder of the night at the mercy of an icepack and their fathers disapproving glances. Somehow, those nights seemed to bring them closer together and bestow upon them the fleeting sentiments of a commonplace family.

It would be three years hence before Sam could reasonably hold his own against Dean, but only one until by means of extravagant dumb luck – which he later endeavoured to pass off as certified intention – he bestowed upon the elder a brilliantly blackened eye. The memory of Dean's expression still remained a distinct image in his memory; complete and uncomprehending shock. That had been an amusing one to try and explain to curious and judgemental teachers.

Needless to say, Dean's brash overconfidence was found lacking when next they spared. For all his profuse repentance, Sam had been proud of that shot.

That same year also saw Sam's initial introduction to Latin and the mechanism, maintenance, history and theory of weaponry. An endless schooling.

By 8, Dean learned the truth about what was really out there. That was a hard year; it was disconcerting and ultimately terrifying when childish fantasies of ghosts, ghouls, monsters and other ill wishing apparitions in the darkness transpired into adult reality.

For those initial months proceeding the revelation he was disposed to witnessing danger everywhere; in the kindly acts of strangers he saw design and manipulation, in the indifferent darkness he saw unnatural figures which endeavoured to ensnare him the instant his fathers guard waned in sleep, and in the idyllic and rustic scenes which impatiently rushed past the windows of the Impala he saw animosity and nurtured violence laying in wait. It had been a time full of uncertainty and doubt, taciturn and verboseness and resistance and comfort.

The was the year he begged Sammy, stop asking; 'Why did they move around all the time?' 'Why didn't they have a mom?' 'Where did dad go when he took off for days at a time?' 'Why couldn't they go too?' Stop asking, because he didn't want to know.

By 9, Sam, already witnessing once too often the perfidious and unpredictable nature of hunting, was forced to watch with bated breath and unease laying like lead in the pit of his stomach as Dean left for his first time with their father and Bobby. Left in high spirits and brash overconfidence – which Sam later conceded was for his own benefit as much as Deans – and returned bruised and bloody, but still smiling.

Occupying the entirety of Bobby's old threadbare couch that night and covered by a garish tartan blanket which cleverly concealed the bulk of the abrasions, Dean looked less like the brother who could take on anything and increasingly like the brother who had bitten off more than he could chew. That had scared Sam for a long time subsequent.

Curled up against Dean's decidedly less injured side that night, in a gesture now solely reserved for ailment injury or distress, his brothers arm encircling him with enough urgency to let Sam know that Dean needed him there, but with enough casual appearance that it belied this need to anyone but, that was the first time either of them really appreciated the fact that the elder was not invincible.

By 10, Dean could could stitch a wound as cleanly and as steadily as a surgeon and with instruments no more specialistic than an ordinary sewing needle heated over a naked flame and rude black cotton. A practice he was required to administer not infrequently. He was also an old hand at CPR and copious other life saving protocols of first aid and recover, the methods of which had been ingrained into him since he was old enough to understand.

Though sometimes he had regarded them with resistance they had been instrumental in some of the decidedly more ordinary but exceedingly unnerving and disquieting experiences of his young life. Like the incident in Boston when Sam was thrown from the playground swings at the hands of a boisterous local child who was debilitated by impatience, and twice as wide as he was tall.

Even to this day Dean could still recall with sickening clarity the way in which Sam's small body arched; arms and legs akimbo, thrown forward by both the momentum of the contraption and the force of his aggressor. In horrifying slow motion, Sam had hit the ground with a noisome thud, and there he had lain, motionless.

Cradling his lifeless brother in his arms upon the warm tarmac until he came too, all Dean could remember wishing was that their father was there, there to take control and to reassure him in that tone which disarmed any thought of doubt, and which his eldest already considered so characteristic, that everything was going to somehow be okay. But the only person Sam had wanted was Dean. The wish, however, was one fervently enumerated throughout the course of his life.

Sam had walked away with nasty concussion, and the event was rendered somehow, even more traumatic in Dean's mind being that it was the first time in a long time he had witnessed Sammy cry at the receipt of any injury. Sometimes it didn't take demons, ghosts or skin walkers, sometimes the evil in commonplace people was enough.

He had sunken desperately into Dean's reassuring embrace, a world away from the Sammy who Dean had witnessed – with quiet pride – just last week take a tumble in the school-yard, and within seconds alight upon his feet again, wiping the blood from his knees without even a hint of distress.

That was not an explanation he had relished upon John's return, especially since he had surmised the blame for the entire incident to rest resolutely upon himself. If only he hadn't taken his eyes off Sam for those fleeting instants. And staying 'home' with Sammy? By 10 years old that was as second nature to him as setting down salt lines and no less elementary.

That same summer, Dean handled his first .45mm and within two months could bullseye every pop bottle and tin can in a 300 yard radius. Sam had watched him in awe, and John had watched him with pride, Dean had simply relished his audience. He always remembered that placid night in mid August when their father, between jobs and in unusually jovial spirits, took up the spare pistol and challenged his eldest to a match, Sam watching eagerly. Amidst the laughter, playful jibes and rhythmic _crack_ of two unloading barrels, he could remember thinking that this was the way life ought to be and that despite the trials and tribulations of the future, somehow, somewhere, the three of them would always be together.

By 11, Sam demonstrated a masterful command of Latin and could recite a heavy duty exorcism word perfect without even so much as a stutter. A feat for which Dean held him in reserved high esteem, though he did not nurture the same passion for the complex pronunciations of the long dead language which played such an integral part in their lives as Sam did.

He would always remember the day when Sam received his first detention. Normal people got detention for instances of improper conduct, misplaced excitement, or general disrespect, but not Sammy. No, Sam obtained his first ever detention for politely and discreetly informing his English teacher of her mispronunciation of a typical Latin phrase, and how this inadvertently altered its semantics. Dean had laughed himself breathless the entire 10 blocks back to the motel, and Sam had alternated between amusement for his brothers evident pleasure at his expense and solemnity.

By the same age, Sam had begun to vehemently protest being left behind when a hunt was at hand. So much so that Bobby, in an effort to curb the adolescents excessive sulking and dejection, which always predominated the first two days proceeding his father and brothers departure, and against his possible better judgement, admitted the youngest Winchester into his sanctuary on the grounds of research. Expecting Sam to grumble and quickly tire of the prospect of the more studious side of hunting, in much the same fashion Dean did, Bobby was practically bowled over by the intensity of his enthusiasm and passion for it.

On that crisp spring night, the hunter and his apprentice sat side by side in a sea of volumes, kindred spirits talking intermittently and as content as two souls can be in a world rendered less acute and more formidable to the open mind. To Sam, it was home.

Bobby believed he had achieved the impossible; compliance from the boy who was sometimes too much like his father, and too little like what said father aspired for him to be, for either of their own goods. Sam believed he had identified a way in which he could constitute an integral part in the hunts he was disallowed to attend, and which would hopefully detract from the misery of being left behind, and the sense of liability it ensured in him when all he wanted to be was like his brother.

Upon reflection, their upbringing was less than conventional, but the conventions of everyday society, were perhaps, like anything else, overrated, and in themselves subjective. These feats were the customs and norms of hunters, milestones indiscriminate to age. And though they diminished such endearing milestones as; a child's first steps, their first day at school and the first time they rode a bike unaided, they still elicited the same joy and pride from those who were guardedly sentimental; hunters immovable to the eye of the world, but within, still capable of the saving grace of love and affection, the one thing that kept them human.

Now, at 13, Sam had been permitted his first hunt; a simple Black Dog, whose apparition had racked up an impressive body count for the locals. Crouched in the ill-kept grass a stones throw from the bridge that was the spectral dogs frequented haunt, Dean alert at his side, waiting for John's command to loose the rounds, Sam began to realize that this life, the life of a hunter was not the one that he wanted. And Dean, at 17, was too well accustomed and too well necessitated in its ways and means to ever desire normalcy. They had reached an impasse.  
>Catching sight of Sam's expressionate trepidation in the corner of his eye, Dean offered him a winning smile, and affectionately ruffling his brothers too long hair in a way he just knew Sam hated, said; "Come on, don't be scared Sammy. 'Long as I'm around nothin' bad's gonna happen to you."<p>

Sam mumbled darkly about the use of the nickname that Dean had taken to uttering with increasing regularity, though one day he was certain he would have to become resigned to it. Dean, however, was not listening, he was too preoccupied with the momentum of the moment.

"The three of us, together at last. This is it, Sammy, what we've always wanted."

Sam did not trust himself to answer, instead he just smiled, smiled through the uncertainty and doubt, smiled as if this, right here, was all they he had ever desired, and for the purpose of supplementing his brothers happiness it was easy, even if it was not more substantial then pretence.

"_Okay boys, it's heading your way, be ready." _John's voice penetrated the static of the radio.

Eyes alight with zealous passion Dean stood and trained his gun; "Ready?"

Sam mirrored the motion beside him; "As I'll ever be"

And as that round found its deadly target, Sam forever cast the cloak of innocence and conquered another milestone. Strange lives.

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><p><em>Thank you very much for reading :)<em>

_One Wish Magic._


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